Richard Serra Obituary, Death – Richard Serra, who had intended to become a painter but instead became one of the greatest sculptors of his time, passed away on Tuesday at his home in Orient, New York, which is located on the North Fork of Long Island. He was responsible for creating a monumental environment consisting of enormous tilting corridors, ellipses, and spirals of steel, which gave the medium a new abstract grandeur as well as a new physical intimacy. He was 85 years old.
John Silberman, his attorney, stated that pneumonia was the root cause of his death.
A few of Mr. Serra’s most renowned works were of a size comparable to that of ancient temples or sacred places, and they possessed the same incomprehensibility as landmarks such as Stonehenge. However, if these enormous structures did have a mystical effect, it was not due to a religious conviction; rather, it was due to the distortions of space that were caused by the walls of these formations, which were leaning, bending, or circling, as well as the plainness of the materials that they were made of.
A flowing, circling geometry that needed to be moved through and around in order to be completely experienced was something that had never been seen before in the field of sculpture. According to Mr. Serra, his job involved a significant amount of “walking and looking,” sometimes known as “peripatetic perception.” According to him, it was “viewer centered,” which meant that its meanings were to be discovered via the process of individual investigation and contemplation. These components were put together using enormous plates of cold-rolled steel that were manufactured in factories that were more inclined to specialize in the fabrication of ship hulls. As a result of their weight, permits were necessary in order to traverse bridges, and cranes with intricate rigging had to be setup in order to transport them.
Because they stood on their own, without the assistance of screws, bolts, or welds, they nearly invariably transmitted a sense of danger. This was due, in part, to the fact that Mr. Serra’s work was all independently constructed. His works that were leaning relied on the curves and tilts that were plotted on the computer to provide stability. The flat, vertical, slab-like elements of some sculptures stood because they were rarely less than six inches thick. These elements suggested both solid walls and gravestones. When they stood, they suggested both. Furthermore, when Mr. Serra’s forms developed into solid cylinders (which he referred to as “rounds”) or near cubes of solid forged steel, they were undeniably stable, even when stacked one on top of the other.
He appeared to be a sculptor in every sense of the word. A combative disposition, a powerfully shaped head that was covered with untamed curls until he started keeping his hair closely trimmed, a compact and muscular frame, and an expression that bordered on furious even when he smiled were all characteristics that he possessed. Speaking in a clipped, assertive tone that could be terse or loquacious, he was brilliant, uncompromising, and constantly contentious. He was also highly argumentative. Despite the fact that he became more relaxed as he got older, there were occasions when he appeared slightly tense, as if he was getting ready for a battle.
In 2002, Chuck Close, a painter, is quoted as saying to Calvin Tompkins of The New Yorker, “It’s a goddamn good thing he’s a great artist, because a lot of this stuff wouldn’t be tolerated.” This statement was made in response to a disagreement that may result in long periods of time during which close friends would not be able to communicate with each other. Through his recounting and repeating of the significant events that occurred in his life, Mr. Serra created an atmosphere of singularity and destiny in the interviews and conversations that he participated in. For instance, when he moved to the east coast from the West Coast for the first time in order to study painting at Yale School of Art and Architecture, his first trip away from campus was not to New York to view Jackson Pollock’s work, as he stated, but rather to the Barnes Foundation, which was located outside of Philadelphia at the time, in order to get “my first good look at Cézanne.”
After Yale, while visiting Paris on a travel grant, he began to move away from painting with almost daily visits to Brancusi’s reconstructed studio — then housed at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris — to repeatedly draw the simplified forms of that Romanian modernist’s sculpture and bases.
